—— Melbourne, Australia, reported last week that a Chinese company linked to China's National Security Department had conducted a confidential data portrait analysis of at least 35000 Australian celebrities.
According to the leak, Zhenhua Data and Information Technology Co., Ltd. has collected at least 2.4 million records of "special interests" in China worldwide. The operation "scraped" open-source material from social media, while also using confidential "bank records, job applications and psychological files" that may have been obtained from clandestine networks ". Defense experts warn that they are likely to "exploit and manipulate" individuals who have the information.
The most striking reaction of Australians to this grave violation of national privacy is... "Oh. "
Compared to legitimate fear, Novelist John Berger (John Birmingham) spoke out loud in his Twitter about the silent anxiety of many Australians: considered not outstanding, It's not worth being painted. "If you're not in the Zhenhua database ," the headline of the Australian Financial Review (The Australian Financial Review) correctly read the mood of the country, Please don't be angry. "Depressing reports offer only a few names: company directors, politicians, judge 、 defense and technology. Scholars. Some native criminals. And, uh, er the 1990s pop star Natalie Inbrugglia (Natalie Imbruglia).
Australians are not entirely indifferent to the impact of the spill. Wang Xuefeng, ABC chief executive of Zhenhua data ," supported the "mixed war" and other "psychological" operations by manipulating public opinion on China's social media application social app, the state broadcaster reported.
Worryingly, Zhenhua's data include files of children, spouses and relatives of well-known nationals, including photo 、 news articles and criminal history. The risk of online fake identity and deep forgery is real.
But we must politely point out that investing money elsewhere may work better if authoritarian china's intention is to exert some russian-style black material on australians and blackmail people with personal information.
This is not to say that we Australians are so holy that we do not do bad things, lie, or create moral disasters in our private lives. It's just that as a people, we try not to humiliate each other for such things.
An important difference between Australia and many other countries is that we hardly expect our political leader and public figures to be morally superior to ourselves. So from a political point of view, we are completely uninterested in their private lives.
A prime minister and suspected mistress went swimming in the 1960s, and her presence was barely recorded. As early as 1972, we had a governor known as "pompous ", when the word" pompous "was a euphemism. At least two of our prime ministers are known for their addiction. By 2018, the Deputy Prime Minister had made the news of a girlfriend getting pregnant, mainly because the woman was hired with taxpayer money. He was re-elected with excellent results; his new mother, baby and ex-wife were all good.
And it's not just politics leader privacy. And 20 years before the marriage of equal rights, Against a homosexual love judge of the Australian Supreme Court, Has led to "outrage" among the law, the Senate and societies that are reluctant to endorse a "culture of prejudice ". Australian pop star Kelly Milo (Kylie Minogue) had an affair with married Shanger Yunton (Jean-Claude Van Damme), And Australians are more curious about the ballet movements he did to her buttock.
For decades, in various movements and legislation, society has consciously removed the stigma of divorce, abortion, sex work, mental illness, sexual expression and addiction. A leader in Australia who admits that he is fighting a situation in private is more likely to cause a sympathetic documentary crew to emerge than to permanently lose status. For a football player to end his career, he has to pee in his mouth in public or sexual intercourse with a dog.
Our tolerant egalitarianism may be incomprehensible to hierarchical societies. Generations of immigrants and refugee came here, passionately seeking asylum and opportunity. Taken together, this is the deep-rooted cultural conviction described by the Australian intellectual Donald Horn (Donald Horne) in his far-reaching 1964 book, Lucky Country (The Lucky Country)——" Everyone has the right to a good time ".
When such "good times" are threat —— crime, such as sexual misconduct or malfeasance, the usual indifference turns into a public thirst for justice. A political figure's corruption behavior was recently exposed and his political career ended in a day.
So, perhaps Chinese portrait analysts are trying to influence people by gathering evidence of crime? If that is the case, we need to remind them that democratic countries like Australia have established transparent systems of oversight and accountability and maintained freedom of the press so that we can eradicate criminals for ourselves. The information that can be searched and collected by Chinese enterprises on the Internet can be —— and must be collected by journalist and investigators who can obtain resources. Foreign institutions will not be able to manipulate offenders if all sectors of society have the tools to expose them.
If the Australians report a relaxed and indifferent attitude towards Chinese data collection, it is because it is no use turning shame into a weapon for people without shame. If everyone knows what secret data is, secret data will not work. In a new world of "information warfare ", liberal democracy has an inherent defense against the manipulation of autocratic states.
